Every
person living in the United States understands the fact that there are
literally thousands of fast food restaurants in each individual state.
What is also known is that these fast food restaurants, because of the
cooking methods they use, produce a large amount of waste. In
particular, fast food restaurants in the U.S. manage to produce a
startling high amount of yellow grease through the various food products
made at each location. What has been generally unknown until most
recently is just how profitable that yellow grease waste is and what
purpose it serves.

A
large portion of fast food restaurants use oil (conventional cooking
oil) to fry and cook their foods in. The grease waste produced from each
fast food restaurant can be recycled and used to create biodiesel that
then fuels cars, factories, and more. With oil prices continuing to
climb, the number of grease waste thefts at fast food restaurants has
increased, according to The New York Times and The New York Post.
Thousands of gallons of used fryer grease are stolen virtually every day
by thieves across the country. The reason: There are is big business in
grease waste and plenty of restaurants producing them.

It
is estimated that a typical fast food restaurant in the U.S. will
produce approximately 35 pounds of grease per day. That number can go up
and down depending on the restaurantís business for the day or even
week. During peak seasons, 35 pounds can increase dramatically. On the
same note, The New York Times estimates weekly production of grease to
be at about 150 to 250 pounds. That is roughly 250 pounds of grease
produced by each fast food restaurant in the country.

The
infographic below shows just how much grease is produced by fast food
restaurants in the US across different time periods.

Following
these numbers,the
average grease production in a month per fast food restaurant in the
country comes out to approximately 1,000 pounds, which is a startling
number on its own. Essentially, that is 13,000 pounds (1,557 gallons) of
grease produced, on average, per year by each fast food restaurant. In
South Carolina alone, 7,908,564 gallons of grease waste is produced per
year. In New York, 8.3 million gallons is how much grease is produced
per year.

On
a grander scale, these numbers are even higher. According to the Pew
Research Center, there are 160,000 thousand fast food restaurants in the
entire country. Taking the averages, fast food restaurants in the
country produce approximately 671,039 gallons of grease per day. In a
week, roughly 4,793,137 gallons of grease is produced by fast food
restaurants. Over a monthís time, that number rises to 19,172,550
gallons of waste produced. Expand those numbers for all 160,000 fast
food restaurants to one year and the result is shocking: 249,243,160
gallons of grease waste produced by all fast food restaurants in the
United States.

With the numbers of fast food
restaurants growing each and every year, the gallons of grease waste
produced per year is also going to increase.